Securitizing Libya: The securitizing aspects of UN:s and NATO:s justification of Operation Unified Protector

Abstract: One of the toughest challenges for the international community is to justify military interventions in sovereign states. Echoing in terms of post-colonialism, underlying interest and power domination, military interventions must be argued for and legitimized in order to gain support from both public and institutional opinion. This is even more essential in our modern era with its rapid and unimpeded flow of communication and information regarding the state and affairs of the world. This study presents how the international community achieves such justifications from a securitizing perspective. By reflecting the military intervention against the Qadhafi regime in Libya 2011 and using a descriptive idea analysis, I uncover the implicit messages of the UNSC Resolution 1973 which authorized the intervention, and in statements by NATO who executed it, and connect these expressions to the securitization theory. This I argue shows how the international community raises security issues, conditioned with crisis and emergency, in order to justify interventions.